I started work at a local sushi bar about a week and a half ago and wasn’t given a contract or anything to sign, but was desperate enough to accept. He told me up-front he’d be paying me less than minimum wage, which shocked me, but I found out via Google that here in California (where the minimum wage is $15.50/hour) that employers can pay ~$13.18 for “learners.” Mind you, learners must have no experience doing similar or related work, and I was very, very open about having worked in food service, before. But I figured he was going to pretend that sushi specifically was different enough to classify me as a learner- something I disagreed with, but was willing to accept because literally anything above $0 is better than the nothing I otherwise make.
But it turns out he wants to pay me $450 a paycheck to 40 total hours of work (20/week), which comes out to ~$11.25/hour, less than even California’s exception allows. I still feel I have no choice and ended up accepting it, but I feel terrible about it.
Perhaps more alarmingly, if less personally, is the extraordinary health code violations I see. My coworkers have literally dipped their bare hands- no gloves- into cream cheese to spread on the sushi. They measured how deep the water in our sushi rice was by dipping their hand into the water and pressing their bare palms flat against the rice. Our “hangiri bowl” that we use to mix the rice with vinegar is wiped with a moist rag but never cleaned. This adds up with online instructions on how to clean it, but given that food remains smeared over its surface afterwards, I cannot imagine how that satisfies health code requirements, and I can find no health code that specifically mentions hangiri bowls explicitly.
I feel like I can’t report these things- health code nor wage theft- without losing my pay entirely (especially given I’m pretty sure the place would be shut down), and I need it desperately. I’m currently a little in the red on my bank account, and my roommate/landlord/good friend has already waived the past two months of rent completely, and paid for my portion of our Hello Fresh meals to literally help feed me. The $450/paycheck ($900/month) should just barely let me break even on food and rent- though it won’t pay for other expenses I need fairly quickly, like dental work, and I don’t think I can bare to turn to my friend to say I can’t pay rent, again, and may need their help to get food.
But I also haven’t gotten a call back for any of the jobs I’ve applied to in months; it’s a really small town, and although plenty of places say they’re hiring, in practice this is essentially the first bite I’ve gotten. I have no idea what’s happening, but I don’t know how much longer it might be before I can get another job.
I just needed to get this all off my chest.